


To Quench Her

by wisdomeagle



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Firefly
Genre: Community: femslash_minis, F/F, Fairs and Festivals, Romani & Travelers, Summer
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-03-05
Updated: 2006-03-05
Packaged: 2018-04-18 11:18:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 982
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4704155
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wisdomeagle/pseuds/wisdomeagle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The heat of August awakens new thirsts in Janna's heart.</p>
            </blockquote>





	To Quench Her

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Alixtii](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alixtii/gifts).



> For alixtii in the Jenny round at femslash_minis. He wanted a balloon, a book, and a bath, no fluff.

Janna is fifteen, dark-haired, and lives at the fair. It's summertime.

She watches parades of girls she knows by sight from school, arms linked and laughing like they're twenty years young. Janna hates them.

Janna lives in light and dark, right and wrong, absolute. She knows that _true_ hatred is only for the darkness that stole her tribe's innocence (and knows this darkness is not just, not only, Angelus and his consort. She knows why they wander, knows it with her blood and the shape of a divining rod in her hand). But she hates the bright-skinned girls who buy balloons and gawk at freaks and eat spun sugar and laugh, and laugh.

Janna learned from vampire stories how to lurk in the shadows, and she likes it here, where the air is cool and the sounds of the fair are muffled by fairy feet tramping.

Janna is fifteen, dark-haired, and when a certain boy stumbles when he tries to ask a certain girl to ride the ferris wheel with him, Janna sees the girl's eyes narrow till the boy is the only thing in them. Uncle Enyos's eyes narrow this way when he tells her the old stories.

When Janna falls in love, it opens her eyes so wide she can see the whole sky for the first time in her life.

When Janna falls in love, it's late summer and the days feel heavy with heat and long with dullness. She's aching to move on, but while the ferris wheel still turns, they stay and pass the hours. Sometimes she tells fortunes while her aunt rests in the hottest hours of the afternoon, but mostly she's free as always to roam the fair.

The day Janna falls in love, the ferris wheel hasn't been turning all day. The girl who rode it every day with her boy looks longingly up to the red carriage that stopped at the top the first time they kissed, and Janna watches the girl, who interests her so much she doesn't notice the girl standing next to her till she feels a tug on her sleeve. She turns around angrily.

"You seen my pa?"

"What does he look like?" Janna asks.

"Tall, overalls, and probably parched. I brought him a lemonade and now I can't find him."

"I'm sorry." Janna pulls away.

"We came to fix the wheel," the girl tells her, companionably, popping open a can of soda pop and offering Janna the first sip. "But then 't turned out the motor was clear wore out. Whoever had the care of her didn't do the thing proper, and now she needs a full working over. Every bolt needs greasin' and every cog double-spun."

"Oh?"

"We'll be here all week," the girl says, happily. "And she's the shiniest machine I ever saw, only needs a little fixin' to make her spin like she oughta."

Her eyes are happy and she's got a bit of dirt in her hair and a heart sewn none-too-well onto the knee of her overalls, and the sunlight reflecting off her skin reminds Janna of far-away places and the feeling of travel, the sound of hoofbeats and laughing children when the tribe is on the move.

"What's your name?" she finally asks.

"Kaylee," says Kaylee, and Janna knows she could have no other. "Want another sip of pop?"

Janna takes the proffered can, drinks too deeply and lets the cold settle in her teeth.

"I'm Janna," she says, forgetting that all year at the public school, she was Jenny. She frowns.

Kaylee doesn't notice and says her name happily, testing it out. "It suits you. You a wanderer?" At Janna's nod, Kaylee's eyes go wide. "You seen far places? You ever -- you ever seen the ocean?"

"Yes," Janna says.

"Tell me?"

"It's bright," Janna says. "The waves were big enough to knock me down; I was scared, but my father held me."

"Was it pretty?"

"It shone."

"Wish I could see the ocean." Kaylee's not a large girl, though she's plump enough to please Janna's grandmother, but she somehow takes up more space than there really is. She is, Janna decides, larger than life.

"I'd offer you a spot in the caravan," she says, "except, you know, you'd hate it."

"Traveling everywhere? Seeing everyone? I wish and wish I could -- I bet you meet more people than I'll see in my whole life, fixin' folks' tractors."

"Yes, well, they aren't always people you want to meet."

"Sure," Kaylee says, disbelievingly. "What's the horse fair like? I heard of it but -- I wish I could see. All those fine stallions and ribbons in their hair and -- do you dance?"

Janna smiles awkwardly. "Not for -- not for you. I can't."

"I understand," Kaylee says, and it's plain as day she doesn't.

"I can show you our tent," Janna offers, and Kaylee nods, but more warily.

Janna's fifteen when she takes Kaylee to her father's tent in the late afternoon, when her parents and aunt and uncle and grandparents and cousins are telling fortunes and talking horses and haggling and just beginning to drink to the coming night and the coming migration.

Janna is fifteen, and loves Kaylee's happy gasp when she steps into the darkness that's Janna's world, when she sees the heavy book that contains and cannot contain their lore, the wooden boxes filled with hay, the great bronze bathtub, the dog whose head Janna strokes absently. She loves and hates the wrinkle of Kaylee's nose when she realizes how pungent with herbs the tent smells. She thoroughly loves the feel of Kaylee's denim and flannel as they nestle into her wool and silk and the way she puts an arm around Janna's waist and touches her hair and Janna loves the way she feels when she closes her eyes and Kaylee kisses her.

Like she can suddenly see the whole world.


End file.
